1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a printer for reducing an area for accommodating ejected printing paper.
2. Description of Related Art
An ink jet printer as shown FIG. 3 is known. In the conventional printer 210, an ink jet head 251 is oriented such that a print face 254 thereof is parallel to an accommodating surface 278 of a stacker 270 for accommodating printed paper.
Printing paper 12 loaded in a paper supply cassette 214 is carried by a paper supply roller 216 between a paper feed roller 231 and a pressure roller 232 onto a printing guide 235. Then, when the paper 12 is fed to a predetermined printing position, the paper feed roller 231 stops. Subsequently, a carriage 252 with the ink jet head 251 mounted thereon is reciprocated along a guide shaft 253 by a carriage drive motor, not shown, while the ink jet head 251 discharges ink from a nozzle thereof onto the printing paper 12 for printing.
Then, when printing of a predetermined width has been completed, the paper feed roller 231 is rotated to feed the printing paper 12 to the next printing position. Meanwhile, a leading edge 122 of the printed paper 12 is ejected from between a paper eject roller 260 and a spur roller 261. When printing has been completed and a trailing edge 121 of the printing paper 12 is released from the held state between the paper eject roller 260 and the spur roller 261, the printing paper is accommodated on the top surface 278 of the stacker 270.
The stacker 270 is composed of a fixed stacker base 271 arranged in a housing 224 and an auxiliary stacker 272 that can be pushed in and pulled out relative to a stacker accommodating space 274 provided under a bottom wall 273 of the housing. An abutting member 275 that abuts against the leading edge of the ejected printing paper 12 is located at B of FIG. 3 when the auxiliary stacker 272 is fully drawn out and at A when the same is fully pushed in. In the figure, L1 denotes the full length of the accommodated printing paper 12, namely the full length of the accommodating surface.
However, as shown in FIG. 3, the conventional printer 210 has a total length L9, which is a length L7 obtained by adding the total length L1 of the stacker 270 to a length L2 from the paper feed roller 231 to the paper eject roller 260, plus a length from the paper supply cassette 214 to the paper feed roller 231. In addition, because there is little internal mechanism portion exposed outward from the paper eject roller 231, the fixed stacker base 271 is relatively short and the movable auxiliary stacker 272 is relatively long with respect to the total.
Consequently, when the printer is not in use and it is attempted to accommodate the auxiliary stacker 272, the abutting member 275 projects out from under the lower portion of the housing 224 to prevent the auxiliary stacker 272 from being fully accommodated, thereby making the printer installation area relatively large. In addition, when the auxiliary stacker 272 is fully drawn out, the printer installation area becomes even relatively larger because the drawn-out length of the stacker is relatively great. These problems are especially conspicuous when the printer is used in cramped places, such as on a desk top.